Am idly looking at some new wheels for the Scott. The standard Syncros rims and Formula hubs are fine but I’d like some better ones. Better as in lighter but not at the expense of reliability

Rims are 80mm, front wheel is 150×15 rear is 197×12

What hub/spoke/rim combo would you go for

What are you using it for?

Consensus seems to be that for trail use 3.8-4″ tyres on narrower rims give better control. So I’m looking at 65mm Light Bike or Nextie rims on Pro4 hubs. But with a 190mm rear you could use DT hubs as an alternative (DT don’t do a 170mm hub).

There’s also ICAN sellig 65mm rims on ebay for £120, which is VERY tempting!

DT 710 rims on Hope Fatsno hubs, personally. Like these from Slam69

http://slam69.co.uk/hope-pro-4—dt710-fatbike-wheel-set-18815-p.asp

I went with 65mm LB on Hope Hubs for trail type (ie. not sand and snow) riding – they’ve been really good.

I’d not really built carbon rims before but they were pretty straightforward once I’d worked out the spoke lengths for staggered drilling (there’s an online calculator that lets you do this) and they’ve stayed true.

Carbon wheel set from ICAN. Choose the width and finish and free hub body

Tubeless without an issue at all… good price, well built and delivered to your door.

What are you using it for?

Cannock

Have got some 4.0s on at the moment and they definitely have their place now conditions are drier but I still like the 4.8s and would like to keep the 80 mm rims

I like those DT710s rp

I’m building (*) BR710s on Big Ride hubs, with lasers. Will work out a little lighter than the BR2250 wheelset and cost me a lot less.

I did think about carbon but I like the DT hubs, and the carbon rims mostly don’t seem to offer much over the DTs other than native tubelessness. Pretty sure I can get past that.

(* I have no idea what I’m doing. So I say “I’m building these wheels” but I might not be really)

value to weight ratio it’s got to be the BR710s.

If you have the dosh get some glossy Nexties. Glossy as they shed the snow better.

Hubwize I’d go for the new Hope Pro4

On the subject has anyone else drilled their own rims (and therefore give back to back opinions)?

Drilled my On-Ones. It feels much better in terms of accelerations but now for the life of me cannot get the front to exit berms where I want it to, always running wide. Either:
1) the rims have lost a substantial amount of stiffness and aren’t tracking properly round hard corners any more.
2) I’m just rusty after a long break from regular riding at Swinley. Both mentally (not looking where I want to be, not invoking laser penis, whatever) and physically (it’s a big lump of bike to muscle out of a big berm and I’m unfit).
3) Something else (all in my head, tyre pressures not quite right).

Waiting for it to dry out later this week and I’ll try again to see if it’s 2 or 3 and can be overcome.

I’m building (*) BR710s on Big Ride hubs

This could be the way forward. Always liked DTs and I get to keep the centrelocks

tinas – I drilled some on-one wheels but the same issues exist with the LB (but to a lesser extent) – it seems to be the sheer gyroscope effect of the wheel spinning that resists the turn – it just wants to keep going straight on. You can unsettle it a bit by steering the opposite direction a little before you make a turn – it tends to unsettle the bike more so it leans more into the corner more quickly (watch motorbike racers they tend to do this). I think generally fat bikes just need more wrangling, tbh.

It really comes down to how much you’re willing to pay.

The ICAN rims are light and go nicely with Hope hubs and probably the best bang for your buck with carbon – and unlike the more expensive carbon rims, no one seems to be breaking them.

(I built a set of those for my plastic fantastic fatbike)

Epicycle, what’s your plastic fantastic fatbike? I always thought of you as more of a utilitarian kind of cyclist haha

Quite a few good deals on Chinese carbon rims/wheels about and Chosen hubs are surprisingly durable too. Go for a 65mm rim meanining the rim is well protected by the tyre – Never had rim strike on my 65mm Nexties. Lightweight carbon rims and tubeless tyres is the biggest improvement you can make to a fatbike IMO – anything else is a compromise.

tinas – I drilled some on-one wheels but the same issues exist with the LB (but to a lesser extent) – it seems to be the sheer gyroscope effect of the wheel spinning that resists the turn – it just wants to keep going straight on. You can unsettle it a bit by steering the opposite direction a little before you make a turn – it tends to unsettle the bike more so it leans more into the corner more quickly (watch motorbike racers they tend to do this). I think generally fat bikes just need more wrangling, tbh.

It’s not that, it’s either the rims have lost enough stiffness as to compromise handling, or I’m just not ‘on it’ after (more than) a few months off.

It’s not the turning in I was struggling with it’s picking the bike up again for the exit that it seemed to be having none of.

I’d normally aim to get the front wheel either un-weighted up in the air, or on the flat ground on the inside at the end of the berm, but at the weekend on every single corner I just seemed to be running out of berm and running wide.

It does feel a lot lighter, especially as I’d been running the OEM tube after a puncture for a while and too lazy to change back, so it’s almost 600g/wheel lost! Weirdly that also makes it feel a lot less ‘fatbike’, it’s lost a lot of it’s blunderbuss nature. I wonder how it would handle with 65mm carbon rims and Juggernaut Pro’s, that’d make the wheels indistinguishable in weight from my trail 29er wheels!

The ICAN rims are light and go nicely with Hope hubs and probably the best bang for your buck with carbon – and unlike the more expensive carbon rims, no one seems to be breaking them.

Do you mean Nextie and LB, or HED/Enve etc?

Tinas, the Nextie, HED etc are their own brands.

These are the wheels I have 90mm carbon fatty wheels

$699 = £480 for two very light, well made and finished, tubeless easy built up wheels.

A very easy company to work with and helpful re customs declarations.

Hugos on Chris King 🙂
[url=https://flic.kr/p/G7H2ED]Untitled[/url] by Richard Munro, on Flickr

Hugos on Fatsnos

The only problem I have with Hugos is the weight – 770g. A Mulefut 50SL is 650g, A Lightbike 29*50mm is 490g…

I suspect it’s by far the strongest/stiffest though.

Does it matter when running 12 PSI?

Tinas, the Nextie, HED etc are their own brands.

I meant in terms of which ‘more expensive’ ones you’d heard stories of failures.

ICAN are quite a bit cheaper than LB and Nextie and a bit heavier, both are equally ‘Chinese’ and produce their own 65mm rims with different profiles and weights so it’s not just factories sharing moulds like some frames.

Whereas HED, Whisky, ENVE etc are a big jump up in terms of cost.

Does it matter when running 12 PSI?

Probably, force = pressure x area. Plenty of destroyed fat rims (and frames) out there!

I have done things to my Nextie rims that would have mangled an alloy rim – particularly if Stans use their normal rim alloy which typically has the stiffness of cheese (more to do with carpark height restrictions 😳 and roofracks rather than biking!)

Nexties from Slam69 FTW

Depends on your budget.
I’ve got some 65mm carbon ICAN rims on the way.
Will be building them with El Guapo fat hubs from Planet X- which look great for the money.

ICAN 80mm rim weight 651gms – not the lightest carbon rim.

officerfriendly – Member
Epicycle, what’s your plastic fantastic fatbike? I always thought of you as more of a utilitarian kind of cyclist haha

It is utilitarian 🙂

Built it so as to have a lighter bike for the ‘Puffer – it weighs about 25lbs. But I prefer riding my Pugsley.

With tubes in, the 5″ tyres are no real advantage on a trail because they snakebite if you run the pressures low enough to get advantage of the flotation, and I’m not interested in going tubeless.

4″ Nates on the Pugsley work better in those above conditions IMO.

I consider 5″ tyres are not big enough for bogs or deep snow, so I want bigger for that as you may have noticed. 🙂

Bookmarking. Love the look of those Hope/DT wheels at slam 69

Temped to get the hope / dr Swiss combo for my Farley .